ANTH 317 - Insurgent Geographies

Spring (3) Amaral

According to Michel Foucault, our era’s fundamental preoccupation is space (1998 [1967]). Space and spatial practice are key themes in the study of modernity and the academic disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and geography, for example, have been central in driving these research efforts. This course adopts a multidisciplinary perspective to construct a theoretical understanding of alternate, often insurgent, social geographies. Instead of simply focusing on insurgent geographies practiced during extreme conditions or at the “margins” of governmental reach, we will examine divergent and sustainable spatial modalities practiced in everyday life. This course considers how these spatial practices map onto, shadow, and/or challenge official colonial and capitalist conceptual and material cartographies as well as create new site ontologies. Students will think through case studies ranging in time and space and include the experiences of colonial black slaves and undocumented residents of modern nation-states.